Building Safer Communities as Climate Change Starts to Bite.
Disasters have affected humanity for our entire history. However, in the wake of climate change disasters have and will increase. Flooding, Earthquakes and forest fires will be the three major events that will kill and displace, millions of people for the next couple of centuries. This has a massive human cost, but also the world’s large governmental institutions have to dig deep to fund rescue and re-development. The costs of preparing for disasters is significantly lower than the cost of coming into a crisis and providing rescue and re-build. The insurance industry for obvious reasons would prefer to prepare rather than repair. But governments prefer to respond to disasters, rather than spending on something that may not happen.
There are many things that can be done to prepare, that are low budget and transferable to many people all over the world. First and foremost, we have to stop building in areas where we know that a disaster may happen. Many new developments are being built on flood plains for example, despite warnings from experts not to. However, building on embankments and reusing natural flood plains for flood waters to flow into, are all cheaper than moving centre's of infrastructure, out of flood prone areas. |
“…there is a debate about whether rising sea levels and melting land based ice sheets will cause more Earthquakes.” |
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Secondly, building on fault lines is also continuing unabated. There is also a debate about whether rising sea levels and melting land based ice sheets will cause the land there to rise putting pressure on the plate tectonics around the world. The focus seems to be on Earthquake proofing buildings. However, the recent Earthquake in the Italian city of L'Aquila in 2009, buildings that should have been Earthquake proof weren’t. The San Salvatore hospital for example, badly damaged in the quake, was built with Earthquake proofing designs and structures. Earthquake proofing is difficult to achieve. Earthquakes often have widely varying characteristics, which makes a buildings’ reaction to an Earthquake hard to predict. But the consensus seems to be to make sure that corners of buildings are well supported (see diagram). This enables a building to absorb movement and prevent collapse. Whatever the investment or technology needed, it still remains the case that avoiding disaster prone regions should be the first option, whether it’s avoiding building near water, or on a fault line or in a forested area. |
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Baca Architects and BRE's concept design for a mixed used development in Peterborough
The Premierline Direct - Business Insurance Department contributed to writing this article. For more information on business Insurance and other types of insurance, please visit their website today.